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Sep 18, 1518
Disease and Indigenous Population Loss
Epidemic diseases unknown in the Americas.
The large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 introduced novel germs to the indigenous people of the Americas.
Epidemics swept the Americas subsequent to European contact, killing between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas :
smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589,
typhus (1546),
influenza (1558),
diphtheria (1614)
and measles (1618) -
Nov 10, 1537
The Slavery Question
In 1537, the papacy definitively recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate. Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could be enslaved nonetheless.
Later, the Valladolid debate between the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas and another Dominican philosopher Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, each took opposing positions to justify enslavement and nothing was resolved. -
Dec 13, 1542
Atlantic Slave Trade
Captured Africans were sold to European slave traders on the West African coast.
“Middle Passage” – Millions of Africans were taken in ship, under inhuman conditions, for the voyage across the Atlantic to the New World.
Treatment – enslaved Africans were auctioned and forced to work under brutal conditions -
The search for Riches
the first Englishmen to settle permanently in America hoped for some of the same rich discoveries like gold and tobacco when they established their first permanent settlement in Jamestown, VA in 1607.
They were sponsored by common stock companies such as the chartered Virginia Company financed by wealthy Englishmen who exaggerated the economic potential of this new land.
The main purpose of this colony was the hope of finding gold. -
Virginia Colonies
John Smith had to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter and the biblical principle that "he who will not work shall not eat.“
The extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists. Tobacco later became a cash crop in 1612, with the work of John Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver of VA and the neighboring colony of MD. -
Migration to North America
A strong believer in the notion of rule by divine right, Charles I, King of England and Scotland, persecuted religious dissenters.
Waves of repression led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies. -
Religious Immigration
Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World
Settlers in the colonies of Portugal and Spain (and later, France) were required to belong to that faith.
English and Dutch colonies, tended to be more religiously diverse. -
Indentured Servants
From the beginning of VA's settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labor and a large portion of the immigrants were indentured servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies.
During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted 75% of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake region.
Most of the indentured servants were teenagers from England with poor economic prospects at home. -
Scope of the Slave Trade
The total slave trade to islands in the Caribbean, North & South America is estimated to have involved 12 million Africans.
The vast majority of these slaves went to the Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished. About 600,000 African slaves were imported into the U.S., or 5%. Life expectancy was much higher in the U.S. so the numbers grew rapidly by excesses of births over deaths, reaching 4 million by the 1860 Census. -
Indentures Servants (cont.)
They were given food, clothing, housing and taught farming household skills. American landowners needed laborers and were willing to pay for a laborer’s passage to America. By selling passage for 5 to 7 years worth of work they could then start out on their own in America. Many of the migrants from England died in the first few -
Forced Immigration & Enslavement
Slavery existed in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans, American Indian groups often captured and held other tribes' members as slaves.
Some of these captives were even forced to undergo human sacrifice such as the Aztecs.
The Spanish continued this with the enslavement of local aborigines in the Caribbean.
As the native populations declined from European diseases, forced exploitation, atrocities, they were often replaced by Africans imported through a large commercial slave trade.
